| The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002. |
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| Russia |
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| A vast nation that stretches from eastern Europe across the Eurasian land mass. It was the most powerful republic of the former Soviet Union; ethnic Russians composed about half of the population. It is the world’s largest country. Its capital and largest city is Moscow. | 1 |
| ‡ Russia was ruled by czars of the Romanov family from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. | 2 |
| ‡ Peter the Great, a czar who reigned in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, attempted to westernize Russian government and culture. | 3 |
| ‡ During the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks, under Lenin, took control of the government; communists governed from 1917 until 1991. | 4 |
| ‡ Russia now occupies the seat on the Security Council of the United Nations formerly held by the Soviet Union. | 5 |
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| | | The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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